Cultural habits play a role: "Reading is considered mainly as a diversion," explains Kukla MacLehose, a literary scout. There is even less foreign literature: a book from India or Kenya quenches thirst for exoticism, without translation. The shop window of Dillons, on Oxford Street, is eloquent in this respect: for every Cormac McCarthy novel and collection of Gore Vidal essays, how many crime stories and thrillers (Stephen King, Jeffrey Archer, Dick Francis) are there? How many sentimental bestsellers (Catherine Cookson or Barbara Taylor-Bradford)? And how many "how to" books? There are few essays or documentary works: the press feeds the ideas debate. In total nearly 83,000 new titles appeared in 1993, compared with 41,000 in France. The British may publish twice as many books as their French counterparts, but the output is very different.

If a study by Bertelsmann is to be believed, the British were among the biggest consumers of books in 1994, with 74 per cent of the population reading books, just lower than the Dutch (77), but higher than the Germans (70), French (66), Italians (51) and Spanish (50). "Catty" is alsosexist in origin, because cats were once always "she".Although Mrs Gingrich was only quoting a man, I guess women nowadays use "bitch" as often as men do. Whatever the PC movement may think of it, there's no stopping it now.Nicholas Bagnall. One legacy of the 19th century is the exceptional range of bookshops throughout Britain, from Cornwall to Scotland. Our own century coined "to bitch" meaning to complain, to be spiteful and "bitchy", which, in the United States can mean to be sexually provocative, as well as what the OED defines, confusingly, as "catty".

Perhaps "bitch" was origin-ally a corruption of an Old Norse word for "devil", say, and only later got confused with the furry pet? No such luck. A bitch has always been a female dog; what's more, its first use as an insult, recorded in the OED, dates back to 1400, when it seems to have meant a lewd woman. By the early 19th century it was being used of things as well: "a bitch of a problem". We never say "a dog of a problem", though "a dog" can mean a no-ho per, a bad investment, or a poor play.But if anything, it gets worse.